To: Members of the PA General Assembly, state legislative staff, political reporters, editorial board writers, and columnists.
PBPC commissioned Data for Progress to do a poll of likely voters on a limited number of issues that are at play in the current budget negotiations.
From May 27 to June 13, 2022, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,134 likely voters in Pennsylvania using SMS and web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points. N=1,134 unless otherwise specified. Some values may not add up to 100 due to rounding.
The polling memo can be found here.
I want to call your attention to three results.
First, there is overwhelming support (73%) for putting the minimum wage on a path to $15 per hour over four years and thereafter having a yearly cost of living increase (77%).
Second, there is overwhelming opposition to cutting corporate taxes. Seventy percent of voters prefer tax increases for billionaires and corporations; only 25% want to see them cut. More than 78% of likely voters want to see the Delaware loophole closed so that multinational corporations can no longer hide their Pennsylvania profits from our Corporate Net Income Tax. And when asked whether some of the $12 billion accumulated state surplus should be devoted to cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, only 2% said yes.
Third, there is support for reducing taxes on the middle class and for additional funding for education at all levels, health care, affordable housing, and clean energy jobs. Because the poll question played investments in one policy area against the others, which is only partly offset by allowing respondents to make two choices, no one policy area received a great deal of support. But the results track our previous polls (here) which have shown majority support for investments that address our current inadequate and inequitable funding of K-12 education and higher education as well as for using federal ARP funds to provide support for small businesses and low-income communities.
With this new polling technique, the sample that’s collected is much larger than normal and includes a great deal of demographic data—this enables us to estimate public opinion in every state House and Senate district. We will be posting these results over the next few days.
Below are the initial House and Senate district results to the following questions:
Should corporations and billionaires pay more in PA taxes?
Should the PA Minimum Wage be raised to $15 per hour over four years?
Note that there is no PA House or Senate district in which less than 58% of likely voters in the midterm election support increasing taxes on billionaires and corporations.
And there is no PA House or Senate district in which less than 61% of likely voters in the midterm election support putting the PA minimum wage on a path to $15 per hour over the next four years.
